Firstly, if you didn’t watch the CV, here it is. We can talk about this after you finish watching it.
Filtering
About half of the participants in coffeelucky 8th are guests I invited, and another half are the combos I opened for public submission. The amount I received this time is less than coffeelucky 7th in total but a lot that are so good and gave me hard time on filtering process.
Certainly, the popular criteria like difficulty, originality, or execution are used in the filtering process. But another major criteria I used in coffeelucky 8th is uniqueness. It’s not only about the trick choices or linkages used in the combo, but also include the spinning speed, hand movement, finger positioning, and everything that make the combo be outstanding from others.
And I didn’t just give the score to all videos I received and put the top 15 to CV, I also consider the balance of the CV to not have too many of the same kind of combos. There’s some combos I filtered just because there’s already other similar combos in the CV. Some are filtered just because they aren’t fit with the music or too short/long for the slot.
The reason I put various kinds of combos in the same CV is because I want people to appreciate more kind of spinning. I expect most people won’t love all of the combos of coffeelucky 8th and I saw the comments saying they like A but not B and vice-versa. I won’t say you have to love all of them, but learning more about why there’s people who love the combo you don’t can widen your aspect on penspinning, and that means you can have more fun with it.
If you’re curious how I think about your videos, why I chose or filtered it, or is it those that nearly to make a cut but got filtered from not having enough slots. Feel free to DM me on Twitter or Discord, I won’t give the critique in public since I think some of you may want to avoid that, but feel free to call me about your own combo.
Editing
I suck at intro.
That’s why I didn’t have any intro in this CV. Not only that I’m not good with it, but also it opens more time slots for more combos too. Actually intro is a good thing since it will warm up the viewers before the main part of the video. But I found that it’s not bad to not having intro too, maybe better than having bad edited one.
The CV title ‘coffeelucky 8th’ firstly appeared at 01:57 in the video, which is already in the second half. This is not common for video editing, but not anything new too. Consider that YouTube already shows the title to everyone before clicking the video, as well as the thumbnail said it clearly too, so I don’t think many people will have trouble about this. At least for me it looks good and pretty funny too.
Concept
Not really a concrete concept, but I have the image of Expensive Chocolate Packaging for the editing (surprisingly not coffee). This actually came to my mind when I saw my old coffeelucky 8th April’s Fool joke and decided to use it in the real one. With some more research for the color scheme and other elements.
Brown color is chosen easily from that image, and mint green coming from the chocolate mint to make the CV being not too monotone. Red (from berries like strawberry or raspberry) and orange (from, yes, orange) were the choices too, but consider the balance of the color, mint green works the best here to contrast with brown.
Text & Font
I used 5 font styles in my CV and they are in the 1 screen, can you spot all of them?
Spinner name (Goudy Old Style) is easy to spot on, as well as the long script I wrote for each spinner (High Summit). The third one is the roman number (Perpetua Titling MT) counting the spinner order. Last 2 are pretty hard since they’re like the usual decorations than text. One is the fancy background pattern (Gothic Flourish) that I use the first letter of each spinner name, this one is the same as I did in my coffeelucky 6th. And the last one is the 8 rectangles puzzle (Franklin Gothic Heavy) which actually is the 2 rows of 4 dots, adjusting the tracking and line spacing, give them the boarder, and fill or remove the color inside, this one is actually the same as I did in my coffeelucky 7th.
The 8 Rectangles Puzzle
So what are the meaning of these rectangles? It looks like it’s not the same as coffeelucky 7th which telling people about which coffeelucky CV these spinners participated before.
Actually, it is similar to coffeelucky 7th. These rectangles pointing which coffeelucky CV each spinner joined before. From the top left is coffeelucky 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th on the upper line, 5th, 6th, and 7th from the left of the lower line, and 0th for the last one on bottom right. If this spinner appeared in which CV, the spots are filled in that places.
But it’s not only that, I added another factor to it too. And it is the order the spinner appeared in coffeelucky 8th, the same as the big roman number. From left to right the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th spinner on the upper line, and 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th spinner on the lower line. After this it returns to the first spot again, so 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th spinner on the top line, and 13th, 14th, 15th on the lower line. 16th spinner will take place in the last rectangle (same as 8th spinner) if there’s. The spot is filled depending on the spinner order.
e.g. on pd’s combo, he participated in coffeelucky 6th, 7th, and 0th before, plus he’s the 2nd spinners. So the 2nd, 6th, 7th, and 8th spots are filled and other are left empty. TUv4 is the first timer of coffeelucky series so all of his spots are left empty except the 4th spot because he’s the 12th spinner.
There’re some special cases too, specifically Herenz’s and mine, which the spot of the spinner order in coffeelucky 8th is already filled from the appearance in previous coffeelucky series. For these cases I just did it vice-versa, by removing the fill and leaving that spots empty instead. So that’s why I have 1 empty spot for mine and non of Herenz’s are filled.
I didn’t plan to make it complex at first, but since I have many first timers in the series here and it may look boring if all of them have the same all empty spots, adding a few factors to make them different results with nice variety of the pattern. They’re just decorations anyway so having some puzzle on it is something I love.
Shane’s Helping
Before I finish the CV, Shane lent me his hand to help furnishing in the last phase. The comments from other people is always big helps since they can see what editors do not. And Shane also has some nice works with his editing too so his comments direct to the point. Various small details as well as some weird timing that only found when uploading to YouTube were fix thanks to him.
Though, I didn’t fix everything he told me. Shane give me the rewording of ‘description’ of every spinners so it can be more natural but I decided to not use his wording. I want those description for each spinner to come from me myself as the owner of this CV, it’s something I want them, as well as other spinners, to know that they’re good, at least from my POV. To be honest I didn’t expect him to do this since it’s not a small task at all, really appreciate his help and feel bad a bit to not use it.
Post Script of the Post Script
This may be weird to say after the long article, but I’m not proud of this work that much. The combos are good and I like them all, but the editing isn’t what I expected it to be.
To make it clear, I like it, definitely not bad for me. It reach my ‘acceptable’ level that I can release the CV, but not the ‘expected’ level I wanted it to be. I found myself struggle on editing various times and couldn’t make it like what I have in my mind, end up using many old elements I used in my previous works.
I have my own standard about coffeelucky series that I want each of them to be better than the previous one (except 0th which can be considered ‘spinoff’). From 2nd to 7th they archive that in my POV. But I didn’t find 8th editing surpass 7th, just something more refined but less creative if you ask me. And this feel like I’ve reached my limit about editing.
But that doesn’t mean I regret making this CV. I still like it and many people told me it’s a good CV, that’s more than enough to say I’m happy with the CV. Some people told me that my CV motivated them to spin and film more, which is probably the words I want to hear from making CV. Nothing better than knowing my work can help the community growing.
coffeelucky 9th?
I need to rethink many things before I start making new coffeelucky or any CV. Learning some new techniques is a choice but if I cannot apply to my editing it won’t do anything. Asking the help from other people is also another good choice, maybe not the whole video but I may ask someone to do the CG or helping me on some other details. I learnt from Shane a lot on this CV anyway. Still nothing decided yet, and I won’t start making coffeelucky 9th soon anyway. Until I have motivation to make the coffeelucky again, I’ll make some more CV like express ones and something else to see what I can use and what to do with 9th.
Until then,
Coffy | Pen Spinning Blog 